The Heavenly Table

26

ELLSWORTH CAME UP out of one of his fields and started down the road toward home. He’d been checking the corn again, trying to judge how much yield to expect. The summer had been hotter than usual, and there hadn’t been a decent rain in weeks; and so, from the looks of things, they’d be lucky to make enough money to get through the winter and spring. They had a hog they could butcher, and Eula had her chickens, but once you figured in taxes and coal and other essentials, they still needed, at the very least, a hundred dollars cash. He was damning the cattle swindler to hell again when he looked up and saw the Taylor boy coming toward him carrying a little bundle over his shoulder. “Howdy, Tuck,” Ellsworth said when he got closer. “What you up to?”

“I went to Meade to join the army,” the boy said, wiping a bead of sweat from his upper lip, “but they wouldn’t have me.”

“Why not?” Ellsworth said. “You got something wrong with ye?”

“They said I was too young,” Tuck said. “Said you got to be at least eighteen to volunteer.”

“Why, that don’t make no sense,” Ellsworth said, “them taking Eddie and not you. He ain’t no older than you are, is he?”

“Eddie?” the boy said.

“Sure, he’s been a-soldierin’ almost a month now. Hadn’t you heard?” Ellsworth watched as a puzzled look came over Tuck’s face. “You know something I don’t know?” he asked the boy.

Tuck swallowed, then said, “Mr. Fiddler, Eddie ain’t in the army.”

“What? Why do you say that?”

“I seen him down in Waverly just last week.”

“No, you must be mistaken. I had a man at the camp tell me he was there.”

“Well, I don’t know why the man would’ve told ye that, but it was Eddie I saw in Waverly. Maybe he got kicked out or something.”

Ellsworth suddenly felt a little light-headed. “Was he with anybody?” he asked.

“Yeah, one of them Newsome girls. The one they call Spit Job. She was hangin’ all over him. And some old feller playin’ music.”

“Music?”

“Yeah, he was blowin’ on a harmonica.”

“Was he drunk?”

“You mean Eddie? Probably. I doubt if he’d let himself be seen dancing a jig out in public with Spit Job unless he was loaded.”

“You don’t know Eddie then,” Ellsworth said, a bitter taste rising in his throat. “He’s went clear off the rails here lately.”

“I’m sorry,” the boy said.

“No, no, I’m glad you told me. Leastways now I won’t have to worry about him getting his fool head shot off in Germany.”

“I wish they would’ve let me in,” Tuck said. “I’d give anything to go.”

“Well, you’ll get your chance, I expect.”

“I don’t know. Pap heard someone at Parker’s say this might be the last war that ever gets fit.”

“Aw, you liable to hear anything over there. Crazy as people are, they’ll probably be plenty more of ’em.”

Tuck nodded his head, then said, “Well, I better get on home and let them know.”

After the boy left, Ellsworth sat down under an old hickory that stood beside the road, a tree that had been there when his father was a boy, and leaned back against it. He again went over the conversation he had had with the man at the gate, wondered why he had lied. All the pride he’d been feeling for his son was gone, wiped away in less time than it takes to tie a shoelace. He felt deflated, as if someone had squeezed all the air, all the life, out of him. He should have known better than to get his hopes up, thinking Eddie would return from the army someday a man, ready to take over the farm. Thank God, except for Slater, he hadn’t told anyone about it. For a minute, he considered walking back to the house and hitching up the wagon, going to Waverly to hunt the little bastard down, but then realized that wouldn’t do any good. What was the sense of dragging him back? He thought about Uncle Peanut, of how he’d disappear for weeks at a time and then return shaky and near death to let his mother heal him up again, just so he could take off again and break her heart into more pieces. No, he wasn’t going to allow Eddie to do that to Eula. He’d give him one more chance if he came home, but that was all. As Jimmy Beulah once told his grandmother after he found Peanut seized up in a ditch over on Hartley Road and reluctantly dragged him home to her, sometimes you just have to let go.

When Ellsworth finally returned to the house that evening, he walked into the kitchen with his hands behind his back. “Look what I found,” he said to Eula.

“What is it?” she asked. She was bent down pulling a pan of cornbread out of the oven.

“Just take a look.”

“Can’t ye see I’m busy?”

“C’mon.”

“Oh, my,” she said, when she turned around and saw the furry ball in his hands.

“It’s a female. Looks a lot like Pickles, don’t it?”

Setting the hot pan on top of the stove, she took the kitten from him and held it up to look into its green eyes. “Where did you find her?”

“The ol’ momma’s got ’em hid in a dead tree over on the widow’s place. I been watchin’ her awhile now.”

“Who?” Eula said with a grin. “The cat or the widow?”

“Ha!”

“Can I keep her?”

“Course you can.”

Later that night, as they were getting ready for bed, Eula said, “I’m going to name her Josephine, after my mother.”

“That’s good,” Ellsworth said. He hung his bibs on a peg and turned out the lamp.

They had been lying in the dark for several minutes when Eula said, “I still wonder why we haven’t got a letter yet.”

“Letter?”

“Yeah,” she said. “From Eddie. At least one to let us know how he’s doing.”

“They probably got him busy,” he told her. “I wouldn’t worry about that. Besides, we couldn’t read it anyway.”

“Maybe so, but Mr. Slater could.”

Ellsworth decided the best thing to do was try to steer the conversation in another direction. He thought for a moment, then said, “Oh, I see what’s goin’ on now.”

“What do you mean?”

“That damn schoolmarm. You’re stuck on him, ain’t ye?”

“Don’t be silly,” Eula said, then giggled and swatted at his shoulder.

“Must have been that flute he was a-playing. Or maybe that dandelion stuck in his ear.”

“You’re crazy,” she said.

“Yep,” he said, as he rolled over to face the wall, “I knew I should have never took you over there to see him.”

“Go to sleep,” she said, “before you get into trouble.”

Ellsworth closed his eyes, but images of Eddie twirling some little strumpet around in a circle kept him awake long into the night, and it was nearly sunrise before they finally spun off into the shadows.